Hītori

I roto i te Maehe 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School(which later became San Jose State University) in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. te State Normal School at Los Angelesopened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The new facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their teaching technique on children. That elementary school is related to the present day version, UCLA Lab School. I roto i 1887, the school became known as the Los Angeles State Normal School.

I roto i 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue (now the site of Los Angeles City College) in East Hollywood. I roto i 1917, UC Regent Edward Augustus Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, and Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began working together to lobby the State Legislature to enable the school to become the second University of California campus, after UC Berkeley. They met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern California members of the state legislature, and Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California from 1899 ki 1919, who were all vigorously opposed to the idea of a southern campus. Heoi, David Prescott Barrows, the new President of the University of California, did not share Wheeler’s objections. I te Haratua 23, 1919, the Southern Californians’ efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which transformed the Los Angeles Normal School into theSouthern Branch of the University of California. The same legislation added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science. The Southern Branch campus opened on September 15 o taua tau, offering two-year undergraduate programs to 250 Letters and Science students and 1,250 students in the Teachers College, under Moore’s continued direction.

Under University of California President William Wallace Campbell, enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so rapidly that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25 acre Vermont Avenue location. The Regents conducted a search for a new location and announced their selection of the so-called “Beverly Site”—just west of Beverly Hills—on March 21, 1925 edging out the panoramic hills of the still-empty Palos Verdes Peninsula. After the athletic teams entered the Pacific Coast conference in 1926, the Southern Branch student council adopted the nickname “Bruins”, a name offered by the student council at UC Berkeley. I roto i 1927, the Regents renamed theSouthern Branch theUniversity of California at Los Angeles (the word “i” was officially replaced by a comma in 1958, in line with other UC campuses). I roto i te taua tau, the state broke ground in Westwood on land sold for $1 miriona, less than one-third its value, by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, for whom the Janss Steps are named.

The original four buildings were the College Library (now Powell Library), Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building (now the Humanities Building), and the Chemistry Building (now Haines Hall), arrayed around a quadrangular courtyard on the 400 eka (1.6 km²) wānanga. The first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 ki 5,500 ngā ākonga. After further lobbying by alumni, manga, administration and community leaders, UCLA was permitted to award the master’s degree in 1933, and the doctorate in 1936, against continued resistance from UC Berkeley.